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Something has cleared my pond of fish

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I have had what appears to be a bit of a disaster recently. At the advice of others on this forum and elsewhere I re-homed my 6 year old comet and 1 year old shub to a pond as they had outgrown the tank I had.

The first month or so went buy well and over the past fortnight babies have appeared in the pond and both the comet and shub had noticably grown in size, the shub in particular. The pond was looking in great shape with all the fish and the babies too, with the filter/pump running 24/7 I had never seen it in better condition. With the babies appearing I assumed this meant the pond was healthy.

However, at some point in the last 7-10 days something has entered the pond and cleared out all the fish, excluding the smallest of the babies. My 6 year old comet is gone!

This really baffles me as there is a metal grid over the top of the entire pond to prevent herrons from swooping down and grabbing a fish. There is also one of those plastic ducks which are supposed to be a deterrent for birds and anything else that is after the fish.

There's some lillies growing in the pond and i've had a poke around with the net to see if they're hiding under there, but there must have been close to 10 adult fish in the tank and now none are there to be seen. The odd baby can be seen, but that's about it.

What is likely to have eaten my fish? The pond is located reasonably close to a river, but not too close. The river is down a very steep banking and I would estimate the river to be approx 400-500 yds away from the pond. Could this be an otter or something similar that has came inland to grab the fish? I can imagine a otter could work it's way under the metal grid (which was held down with bricks and stones).

After a month or re-homing I thought i'd done the right thing, now I wish i'd never bothered. :-(

I can't think of anything else that would do this. It almost has to be an otter or someone with a net removed them manually. To get every baby, as well, it almost has to be something that went into the pond with them, don't you think?

I know someone who had a whole pond cleared out in less than a week by a muskrat.

If you take your time to do the research FIRST, you can successfully set-up and keep ANY type of aquarium with ease."Not using a quarantine tank is like playing Russian roulette. Nobody wins the game, some people just get to play longer than others." - Anthony CalfoFishless CycleCycling with FishMarine Aquarium Info [URL="http://saltwater.aquaticcommunity.com/"]

This sucks.How big were these fish? Was anything disturbed in the pond(plants, decorations,rocks,etc.). I would take a walk around the surrounding area to look for fish remnants. Does the pond have steep or shallow sides? As Bigge3415 said, snakes could be a problem too. But a snake usually would eat one fish and be full for a while.

had racoons eat our koi fish one time. I also have two ponds in our covered back patio with 5 goldfish that are over 7 years old. I worry all the time that the raccoon's are going to get in there and eat them. Unfortunatly the koi were in the front yard in a large tub.